Monthly Archives: October 2012

The next U.S. Senator from Virginia? You could do worse! In fact, Virginia might.

I’m going to vote for Tim Kaine, the ex-Democratic Governor of Virginia running against George Allen, the Republican trying to regain the seat he lost in 2006 to James Webb. After the slimy, dishonest campaign Allen ran against Webb ( full disclosure: I went to law school with the Senator, and know him personally. A more honorable, courageous, principled man doesn’t walk the earth), Allen lost any chance of a vote from me forever, and it wouldn’t matter if his opponent was a toilet brush.

Nonetheless, Kaine’s ads are making me think he’s only a step or two above toilet brush level. Especially outrageous is this line, from a “war on women” ad “approved” by Tim Kaine, intoned by an announcer as the camera shows a woman:

“Allen would take away her Constitutional rights by reversing Roe v. Wade.”

Even counting “v.” as a word, this inexcusable statement includes four misrepresentations in just twelve words, an impressive total, though I’m sure Bill Clinton has topped it at one point of another. Let’s see: Continue reading →

No matter who wins the Presidency on November 6, one thing is for certain. We now can be sure that the day will come when a future Presidential campaign runs an ad that concludes, “Don’t vote for him: he’s an asshole!” For that, we will be able to place the blame on, of all people, Barack Obama, and his 2012 campaign. This is the same Barack Obama who promised, the first time he was running for President, to change the tone in Washington; the same President Obama who told a group in 2010…

“But there is a sense that something is different now, that something is broken, that those of us in Washington are not serving the people as well as we should,” Mr. Obama said. “At times, it seems like we are unable to listen to one another, to have at once a serious and civil debate. This erosion of civility in the public square sows division and cynicism among our citizens. It poisons the well of public opinion….Civility is not a sign of weakness.”

Yet his 2012 campaign’s embrace of gutter-level name calling and divisive rhetoric, with the full participation of both the President and the Vice-President, has guaranteed that the tone Obama promised to change will change for the worse, and that the well of public opinion will be more toxic than ever. Continue reading →

We have enough laws; too many, in fact. This ridiculous incident reminded me of a question that has been bothering me for a long time, however.

In York County, Pennsylvania, mother and wildlife-lover Justina Laniewski was taking care of her toddler. She was also drunk as a skunk, and decided, in her wisdom, that a flock of wild ducks were endangered by the swift currents of Codorus Creek, swollen by Hurricane Sandy. Ducks are water birds, swim well, have webbed feet and also can fly away in the presence of danger. They seldom, if ever, drown. Never mind all that: Justina—who has no wings or webbed feet, or a brain either, apparently–-jumped in to rescue them. Her toddler, left unattended on the shore, was about to toddle in after her mother, but was grabbed at the last second by a neighbor. Firefighters had to rescue Laniewski from the neck-high water, as the ducks, I presume, laughed their tail-feathers off. Continue reading →

Maryland is supposedly one of the most progressive states in the country. One can make one’s own calculations about what it means that such a state is ready to wholeheartedly embrace government-sanctioned gambling as the easy and cowardly solution to its fiscal problems, despite the fact that the populations most harmed by gambling are the very people good progressives are supposed to care about most. My assessment is that resorting to gambling for state revenue is irresponsible, callous, venal and hypocritical. But an unholy alliance of cynical liberals, who argue for gambling because its ill-gotten tax revenue will support education (and we all know that the more money you pay teachers, the better educated our children will be), greedy business interests, and libertarians, who regard gambling as “victimless,” is now poised to add casino table gambling to the state’s sanctioned traps for its poor, desperate, dumb, corrupt and addicted. should Maryland’s voters approve “Question 7″ on the ballot November 6th.

All over the internet, the results of the AP’s just released “Racial Attitudes Poll” are being headlined as “proof” that racism is alive and well in America, and that racial bias has increased in the last four years. Either the poll is being released now to attempt to make Americans feel guilty about not wanting to vote for Barack Obama, or it is setting up the excuse for Obama’s defeat, should it occur, that only racism can account for such a successful, brilliant, eloquent leader being defeated. I apologize for the cynicism. With all the talk about “firewalls,” however, it seems self-evident that white guilt, which has been the target of pro-Obama racial politics from the beginning, is one of the most obvious, odious, and desperate.

The poll, in my analysis, is garbage, and unethical garbage as well. It is an accumulation of confirmation bias, locked in with horrible methodology. Continue reading →

According to court documents, Angela Buchanan, 30, of Lufkin, Texas, desperately wanted to be in a romantic relationship with a long-time female friend. She contacted the friend on Yahoo Messenger in March, explaining that she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008 and was now suffering from a pre-cancerous mass. She told her concerned friend that she was being treated by a local gynecologist. Then the gynecologist contacted the friend too, also on Yahoo Messenger. The doctor confided to the friend that the pre-cancerous mass in Buchanan’s breast could possibly be delayed or even reduced and cured by an increase in hormone production, which, the doctor helpfully suggested, could be stimulated by sexual intercourse. The doctor recommended that the friend agree to participate in sexual activity with Buchanan in order to bolster this vital hormone production—if she really wanted to save her friend’s life, that is. Continue reading →

Did you hear the gross and inappropriate remark Joe Biden made to the father of one of the soldiers killed in the Benghazi attack? Of course not! Because it makes the Vice President appear to be a clueless and insensitive fool…we can’t have THAT…not before an election!

It’s pretty simple, really. The American people have a right to know what really happened in Benghazi, and as new questions keep arising, the appearance of a cover-up on the part of the Obama Administration keeps getting more difficult to deny.

On 9/11 of 2012, an armed attack on the American embassy in Libya left four dead, including the Ambassador. After the attack, the only official U.S. comment was on the website of the Cairo embassy, which had experienced a violent protest, disavowing an anti-Islam film trailer that had been posted on YouTube, essentially suggesting that the violence had been provoked by offensive American speech.

Many days afterward, that remained the official position of the Obama Administration, to such an extent that ten days after the raid the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. visited all the Sunday talk shows to describe the attack as spontaneous, not planned terrorist actions, and sparked by indignation over the video. President Obama went before the U.N., and again disavowed and blamed the video. Continue reading →